I will tell of my feelings of shame and guilt and how I overcame them by looking at the situation objectively and assigning blame, in the hope that is of some help to other people who are suffering from these feelings. I do not wish to offend anyone or take more space on this thread than I should, so please ignore this if you don't want to read it. I will repeat, this could be upsetting for anyone who is triggered by medical settings or assaults, so please be careful.
This is what I was ashamed of and how I defeated it:
Acting in a disinhibited way, calling them names, lashing out physically, and insulting the medical standards of the entire country at first, then saying embarrassing personal things about myself and continuing to act in a extremely disinhibited way until I was put back under. I defeat the bad feelings that come up about that by reminding myself that I was in the midst of a fight and flight situation in which the primitive part of my brain, untethered from conventional rules by drugs, terror and rage, took over. As it would for ANYONE in a similar situation. It was not a case of me acting in an "unladylike" way because I am coarse and poorly bred, which is how I was made to feel. I'm not, and if I hadn't been forced into it by them, I would never have known that I (and in fact any human being) possessed the ability to act that way.
Having a bowel movement on the operating table in front of five strange men. How I fought against that shame: educating myself about how medications used during surgery and mortal terror can affect the digestive system. I also tell myself that something like this happens in medical situations everyday and there is no reason why my human body should have reacted any differently than any other human body would have.
I also had feelings of self loathing because for a period of time I was held down by these men, naked under an operating light, shivering violently and lying in my own filth while being verbally abused by the nurse anesthetist and scrub nurse. It made me feel like an ugly animal. THIS IS NOT MY SHAME. It is theirs, for putting their career concerns before my welfare, for completely robbing me of my dignity, and for continuing to hurt me during the most vulnerable moment of my life. This is, more than anything else, the reason why they will fry in the pits of hell for eternity. Not me.
When I called the consultant anesthetist several months after the surgery to privately ask why I couldn't sleep properly and was having nightmares about all of the above, and the actual awareness which precipitated the assault, she never called me back. This is when the PTSD took grip. I became overwhelmed by feelings of shame and guilt, of being a nuisance, someone who was not worthy of an important doctor's time. I have defeated this by reminding myself of the Hippocratic oath "First do no harm" and reminding myself of how completely they failed me after injuring me and also what they said to me at the time: "stop making a fuss, you're being a baby and we'll treat you like a baby". She also chose to leave me with a nurse anesthetist who was high on drugs, instead of staying with me herself or postponing the surgery because he was incapacitated. Again, this is HER SHAME. Not mine.
The thing that I will own is that I was a difficult patient prior to my trauma and didn't give an accurate medical history. I was frightened about the surgery and had a poor doctor patient relationship with the surgeon. I was also being bullied by my psychiatrist to go back onto several different psychotropic medications, including an antipsychotic that would have been prescribed at three times the dose that I am currently on, after having just given birth to my third child. I was living in a foreign country with a very weak support system and to say that I felt like I was being cornered and forced into something that I knew wasn't right is a huge understatement. As I said, I own that I wasn't rising to the challenge that was being presented to me, but that's all I was doing. The surgeon chose to write off my bitchiness as a personality trait, and not retrieve my medical records prior to the surgery. It's probably also the case that he scheduled the surgery too close to the time that I had given birth (eight weeks) unnecessarily. This may have affected how the anesthetics worked for me. He also chose to let his inexperienced junior colleagues close the wound and left the OR before the end of the surgery. He acted unethically, and he has no one to blame but himself for having it blow up in his face. HIS SHAME, NOT MINE.
I will say that a lot of those feelings of guilt, shame and secrecy stem from my childhood and the way I was treated then. I credit that environment for laying the groundwork for my PTSD and the only antidote to it has been objectively looking at the facts and informing myself of how it should have been. And it was ALL WRONG. NO ONE, FOR ANY REASON, SHOULD HAVE BEEN TREATED THE WAY I WAS, AND THEN MADE TO FEEL IT WAS THEIR FAULT. The fact that I was proves their guilt and desperation, and has absolutely nothing to do with me.
That is how I have defeated my feelings of shame. I'm sorry that it's so long and only deals with my stuff and has so many shouty words and disturbing elements, but this is what I have had to do to get over it. And it has worked.:). I truly hope that anyone else who is suffering with these insidious feelings can take something from it and help put their minds at ease with regards to their own situation. Please don't let the perpetrators of the crime continue to hurt you through shame and guilt. Fight it by assigning the blame where it belongs, and don't look back.
